Celebrity Minister Julie Bishop delivers extra $4M to Michael Bloomberg & "data for health" innovative initiative in New York today
Thursday, 18 May 2017
(Bishop, the boyfriend and the boss who approves the travel)
"Wait until Senate estimates sees this, they are gonna freak," Ms Bishop said cheerily over a sandwich while being briefed for the Bloomberg meeting.
Julie Bishop is currently in New York to re-launch (for the 6th time) Australia's bid for a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
She'll also handover a gift of $44M to the UN just in case they need it for emergencies.
And she's just posted this press release - another $4M for a total of $24M to celebrity New Yorker and Bishop DFAT JV partner Michael Bloomberg for their pet project called "Data for Health".
Bloomberg is coincidentally in a JV with the Clinton Foundation in something Hillary announced called "Data2X".
Data2X is a data management JV between the CF and Bloomberg's Foundation - to record data for women and their "issues" around the world.
Thanks to Bishop, the Australian Government is currently in a 5 year MOU period to work with the Clinton Foundation to "transform health" in our region.
You may ask why Australia's Foreign Minister would have to trot off to New York to engage the requisite talent to respond to demand for health data gathering in the Asia Pacific.
I find myself asking that question right now. It's a very good one. I hope someone in the Parliament is up to asking it.
Here's a little of the history of Australia's Celebrity Minister and her pressing need to be photographed in New York.
With @MikeBloomberg #NYC to announce #dataforhealth increased partnership @dfat_iXc @Bloombergdotorg https://t.co/ddo8xAR643 pic.twitter.com/cEP4xmxZdo
— Julie Bishop (@JulieBishopMP) May 18, 2017
This is today's media release:
On 18 June 2014 Julie Bishop announced a "new aid paradigm" - much the same as the old ones Rudd and Gillard had except Julie Bishop now gets the frequent flyer points to New York.
- Australia’s aid investments will be required to address women’s empowerment
- $140 million will be provided to trial and test innovation in development assistance.
- Australia will be a founding partner in the Global Development Innovation Ventures program
- Bishop established a new development innovation hub in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to engage creative thinkers from inside and outside the public sector, from Australia and overseas
On 24 September 2014 Ms Bishop was in New York during the annual Clinton Global Initiative party to witness an MOU with Bill Clinton.
Bishop committed Australia to
"work together with CF to transform access to health in developing countries over the next five years" (09/12 to 09/19).
The MOU will:
- support Australia's $5BN PA aid program
- support innovation in research and new technologies
- promote sustainable economic growth
- alleviate poverty
- build expertise and networks in facilitating public‑private partnerships; and
- private sector financing for health investments
A Development Innovation Hub within DFAT will test creative ideas and strategies
Since 2006, Australia has contributed $88 million to the Clinton Foundation.
ENDS
On Monday 15 December 2014 Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton announced a tie-up to create a data management entity to measure and track data about issues affecting women and girls and their health around the world.
The "Data 2X" initiative would join the CF/Bloomberg C40 climate change joint venture in the stable of Bloomberg/Clinton JVs.
Hillary Rodham Clinton announced an effort to gather data on women and girls around the world on Monday in New York. CreditAndrew Burton/Getty Images
Since she stepped down as secretary of state in 2013, Mrs. Clinton has worked with her daughter, Chelsea, who also attended the event, on a separate partnership between the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that seeks to collect data on the progress women and girls have made globally.
“There’s a saying that has served us well in government and in business and in philanthropy,” Mr. Bloomberg said as he introduced Mrs. Clinton. “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
Mrs. Clinton added later, “There is a shared commitment, some would say passion, for good data — understanding it and then applying it.”
The event on Monday highlighted Mr. Bloomberg also has much in common with her husband. The former mayor and former President Bill Clinton jointly developed a climate-change effort focused on improving conditions in cities. Bloomberg L.P.has been a sponsor of the Clinton Global Initiative, and Mr. Bloomberg gave the Clinton Foundation $150,000 in 2012 for environmental projects in Haiti, among other collaborations.
On Monday, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Bloomberg wasted no time in moving on to their next commitments. Both left the event shortly after Ms. Clinton sat down to moderate a panel on Data2X.
On 23 March 2015 Bishop launched the $140M innovationxchange.dfat.gov.au and announced its first partnership - "Data for Health" with Bloomberg along with a $20M contribution from Australia.
In her speil Bishop refers to the members of the International Reference Group "High profile members include Michael Bloomberg from Bloomberg Philanthropies, Ms Sally Osberg from the Skoll Foundation and Dr Sam Prince MD entrepreneur and philanthropist". High profile apparently was the major criterion for selection.
Also on 23 March 2015 - Bishop and Bloomberg release this co-authored article picked up by various media, particularly in Africa - this from DEVELOPMENT
Better Health Data: A Matter of Life and Death
What are the top five leading causes of death? In many countries, the answer is: We really do not know.
The World Health Organisation estimates that 65 percent of all deaths worldwide – 35 million each year – go unrecorded. Millions more deaths lack a documented cause. Without that data, governments, donors, and NGOs essentially have to guess how to best target their resources to prevent deaths and diseases, and they have no way to measure their progress – which means people are suffering needlessly and dying from preventable causes.
The absence of data can be deadly. Governments and nonprofits are finding innovative ways to use their resources to improve lives in a changing world – but in many countries, progress is severely limited by a lack of reliable health data. Some governments lack data on risk factors that contribute to poor health. Some do not even have records of births. This is essentially a massive record-keeping problem that has implications for billions of people – and it is solvable.
Today, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Australian government are launching a major new programme to close the global gap in health data. Over the next four years, the Data for Health partnership we are leading will help low- and middle-income countries gather more accurate and complete health data, including data on births, deaths, and risk factors. We’ll focus on 20 countries in Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and Latin America with the biggest opportunities for improvement – and the programme will help implement practices that can be replicated in other countries around the world.
ENDS
On 30 March 2015 Bloomberg and Bishop were at it again in the media - this time it wasn't just the $20M Data for Health project, they were jointly spruiking the whole $140M innovationxchange.dfat.gov.au shooting match.
https://3blmedia.com/News/Julie-Bishop-Michael-Bloomberg-Collaboration-Private-Sector-Helps-Aid
On Friday 29 May 2015 Bishop was invited to New York to attend the Clinton Foundation Annual Retreat - to create the CF's plans for the next year.
In May 2015 Bill Clinton thought of Julie Bishop as one of the Clinton Foundation's "closest supporters" - so close and so supportive he invited her to New York for the CF's annual internal planning retreat.
Clinton's personal invitation was delivered through then Ambassador Kim Beazley direct to the Foreign Minister's office.
Clinton used the formal diplomatic channel to ask our Foreign Minister to take part in the planning day with him and his top advisors/leadership team "to celebrate our shared success, reflect on recent accomplishments and engage in discussion around our priorities for the year ahead."
"We hope you'll join us to share your input and to help us shape our work for the years to come. Thank you for your continued friendship and thought leadership".
The level of intimacy given recent disclosures is frightening.
Just months previous - Bishop was in New York for the Clinton Global Initiative where she committed Australia to working with the CF for 5 years to 2019 to transform health in the Asia Pac.
On 31 August 2015 Bishop announced she was adopting the Clinton Foundation's Shared Value Through Partnerships program to support and measure Australian aid.
The Shared Value Project is the peak practice body for shared value in Australasia, and the exclusive regional partner of the Shared Value Initiative.
"Shared Value Initiative" is a Clinton Foundation initiative:
https://www.clintonfoundation.org/blog/2014/05/12/three-ways-cgi-commitments-integrate-shared-value
On 26 September 2015 Bishop was in New York for the Clinton Global Initiative. Fairfax Media carried this report:
New York: In a swank Upper East Side office in Manhattan a couple of hours after attending the Pope's address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday morning, Julie Bishop is teasing one of the most powerful men in the city.
"You know, Virgin Airlines in Australia has this chocolate-coated popcorn that is the best. I gotta tell you, it's the best," the Foreign Affairs Minister tells Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire media mogul who, as a three-term New York mayor, waged a public health war on cigarettes and sugary drinks.
"Only Richard Branson would come up with that," Mr Bloomberg responds.
When the two met in these offices a year previously Ms Bishop had lobbied Mr Bloomberg to join an international group of advisers to help steer a pet project – the innovationXchange – set up by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to help find new ways to target Australia's aid spending.
The idea was to separate the group from the department and to allow it to develop and test small programs to see if they delivered better results.
The point was to let them fail, learn from mistakes, and replicate those programs that worked.
("Wait until Senate estimates sees this, they are gonna freak," Ms Bishop said cheerily over a sandwich while being briefed for the Bloomberg meeting.)
The idea immediately appealed to Mr Bloomberg, who famously mistrusts bureaucracies – government and corporate – and whose philanthropic group actively seeks out innovation in aid delivery.
As part of innovationXchange Bloomberg Philanthropies has launched Data for Health, a US$100 million initiative to help 20 low and middle income countries improve public health collection so they can better target health spending. The Australian government is contributing US$15 million.
"Most government programs are run for the providers rather than for the recipients," Mr Bloomberg says in a small glass office. Outside, another member of the reference group, Bjorn Lomborg, the scientist made controversial by his book The Skeptical Environmentalist, is chatting as he waits for the meeting to start.
Mr Bloomberg believes the best way to drive innovation is to set up small groups freed from their bureaucracies.
"You just have to take a clean piece of paper and keep the other people from getting their hands on it," he says.
"Not everything will work, but you can try some new things."
In the meeting that followed, hosted by Mr Bloomberg and attended personally and via Skype by the advisory group, two programs were approved.
One will consult with the government of East Timor to explore a pilot project to tackle chronic malnutrition and anaemia.
It will use mobile phone technology to disseminate health and nutrition messages, track where nutrition efforts should be targeted and explore a new Australian technology to diagnose anaemia using a smartphone photo of a person's eye.
A second will be a pilot project seeking to link entrepreneurs – particularly women - of the Indo-Pacific region with expert advice from the innovationXchange program, including from its own international reference group and their business and scientific networks.
ENDS
And here's Ms Bishop with the crew at her Ruddesque $140M innovation baby.
What the bloody hell do we need a foreign minister who spends her time doing expensive crap like this for?